Huge number say they're extremely enthusiastic about voting for president next year

In September 2015, only 31% of registered voters said they were extremely enthusiastic to vote in 2016’s election for president. In October 2011, 28% said the same, 26% in June 2007 and 19% in October 2003. The 45% who say so now more than doubles the number in 2003, an extreme increase.

Both Democrats and Republicans are excited about the election — 47% of Democrats say they’re extremely enthusiastic to vote and 51% of Republicans. Both parties numbers have shifted slightly throughout the year, but have remained unprecedentedly high.

In the poll released Wednesday, former Vice President Joe Biden led the pack among Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents, 24% of whom said they wanted to support him in his candidacy, followed by 18% for Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren and 17% for Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders.

But the Democratic electorate who are extremely enthusiastic to vote for president prefer Warren (23%) and Biden (21%), followed by Sanders (15%).

Warren is supported in significantly higher numbers among those who are extremely enthusiastic (23% versus 18% among overall Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents). Neither Biden nor Sanders supporters move significantly among the extremely enthusiastic.

The CNN Poll was conducted by SSRS September 5 through 9 among a random national sample of 1,639 adults reached on landlines or cellphones by a live interviewer, including 908 Democratic or Democratic-leaning registered voters. Results for the full sample have a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 3.2 percentage points, it is 4.3 for the subset of potential Democratic voters. The survey’s sample included oversamples of African American and Latino registered voters. Those subsets have been weighted to represent the appropriate share of the overall population, and are not over-represented in the overall results of the poll.